Questions for Atheists

Well, I do admit that some people (including theists, by the way) do seem to think that science can answer everything -- or at least potentially answer everything given enough time.Me, I don't know whether the scientific method is capable of answering all questions even if given as much time as needed. Certainly there are still unanswered questions, and some of the answers scientists think that they have will probably be shown to be incorrect.The scientific method is not a fool-proof method of providing answers. It is, as far as I know, the best method yet devised by humans to come up with answers about the physical world. Part of that is because it has a method of testing for wrong answers -- by continuous experiment and observation. That is probably the reason that it has been so effective.Now I can't speak for all atheists, but science providing answers is not the reason I believe that there are no gods.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

Well, I don't think so. Some atheists seem to believe in some of the "New Age" woo, so I don't think this is a necessary conclusion.But I do believe this, so let's have at this.- Which people do. Some drugs, and some of which have beneficial therapeutic value, do just this. Physical injury to the brain also does this, as does some forms of surgery. What is the problem here?- I doubt it. Thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and so forth are not due to chemical reactions as much as they are due to how the neurons are physically connected. And some connections get used in several different patterns; it's not as if individual thoughts, memories, beliefs, and habits have their own separate compartment -- they are intertwined and intermixed so trying to change one belief into another belief is going to cause other beliefs to also change, perhaps in unpredictable ways.Taking this into account, we can change peoples beliefs and behavior through drugs -- psychiatry and psychology actually do this. I suspect, though, that precise control of actual specific beliefs and thoughts may very well be impossible since there may be a limit to how many different ways the interneural connections can be configured, and so some combinations of beliefs may be impossible to realize even theoretically.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

This seems to be an odd statement. Suppose that I agreed that it is possible, at least in principle, that one can manipulate another person's beliefs and thinking, and suppose that I agreed that one can do this to any desired precision, to make a person believe and think whatever one wants them to.Why do you think that should call the "worth of my opinions" into doubt?

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev